Post-Crisis Values Revolution

Leslie Halleck’s North Haven Farms is one of fifty companies interviewed for the Wall Street Journal best-seller: Spend Shift: How the Post-Crisis Values Revolution is Changing the Way We Buy, Sell and Live. Photo from book.

East Dallas makeover in new book

Spend Shift: How the Post-Crisis Values Revolution Is Changing the Way We Buy, Sell, and Live
Hardcover published October 2010
By John Gerzema, Michael D’Antonio

Excerpt:

If you want to see how the Great Recession has reshaped consumerism you can start with the both the chicken and the egg. You find them in hundreds if not thousands of backyards, where do-it-yourselfers have built coops, installed hens, and begun harvesting their own eggs. At most of these homes you’ll also see the modern version of the old Victory Gardens: small plots that produce crops all year long. This shift from consumption to production in households across America is part of a more self-reliant lifestyle.

Today it’s about make instead of take: Twenty-three million Americans grew their own food last year, while nearly two-thirds of American households in our surveying were learning new skills in order to be more resourceful.

Leslie Halleck was one of the first on her block to start raising chickens in her backyard. She bought them in 2008, as the Great Recession gained momentum, and then watched as people all over her neighborhood in East Dallas called Little Forest Hills, followed suit. But no one would have noticed if a black-and-white Dominique hen hadn’t wandered away from her home. A homeowner who alerted the gardening writer at the Dallas Morning News discovered the lost chicken. City officials got into the act and pretty soon they were getting anonymous complaints about henhouses all over Dallas. As Halleck recalls it, the chicken controversy was eventually resolved when city officials realized that no ordinance banned backyard hens. A hastily adopted rule against roosters eliminated concerns about noise, and nuisance laws assured that other complaints could be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

Read the complete article here.

See the book here.